Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/108

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for the bad old way which had for so long been the goal of democracy in international affairs—was rejected by the Germanies. Neither to the International Tribunal of the Hague, so proposed by Serbia, nor to a conference of the Great Powers, but to the sinister logic of Krupp and Zeppelin did the Central Empires resort for a settlement.

All the accumulated hatred of European history were let loose to fill the world with tumult and rapine. It is true that if you trace these hatreds back to their sources you will find no immaculate nations. True also that they were perilous stuff of which the European system had not purged itself. But the unchallengeable fact remains that while democracy was seeking a solution in terms of peace, "the old German God" forced it in terms of war. Nothing can ever displace or disguise the plain historical record which exhibits as the origin of our Armageddon the intransigent determination of the great Empire of Austria-Hungary to violate the sovereign rights of the small nation of Serbia.